Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to HUBER+SUHNER AG's conference on the 2025 year results. We will follow also this year the same agenda as last year. With me is Richard Hämmerli for the second time. He's our CFO since a year and he will support me in doing a deep dive into the financial results. We have in December narrowed our guidance and in January, as usual, we have communicated on our top line 2025. The novelty of this year's figures is probably limited. On this page, you see the key figures 2025 at a glance. Those are the numbers that we are going to look into in more details together in the next 45 minutes. I will not go into the details here as we will do the analysis during our presentation.
This now the full set of P&L figures, with order intake certainly being a highlight and sticking out. Significant gains in order intake are due to a sharp increase in data center orders but also the whole industry segment has contributed to the increase in order intake, which results in CHF 1,032 million, a level which we haven't seen in HUBER+SUHNER's history. The increase represents a good 14% versus previous year. On net sales, we have to accept a 3% decline versus last year. Organically, we are flat. We have guided precisely a year ago at the same place for a flat development and it proved to be that the Swiss franc created some headwind for HUBER+SUHNER in the range of 3%. Richard Hämmerli will elaborate on the impact of the currency during the last year. With the six hundred.
With the CHF 864 million sales, we are actually okay because we always stated clearly that in 2024 we had a large Indian business at hand, so we had to compensate for about a CHF 100 million sales from 2024 to 2025, which we almost managed and as we mentioned organically, we managed completely to replace this Indian project in the application of mobile infrastructure. On the bottom line, operating profit rose by 80 basis points. This is mainly due to the business mix, which was more favorable for HUBER+SUHNER based on the growth of the strongest contributing segment Industry. We could increase to 10.5% on the operating margin. Net income rose accordingly by 60 basis points. When we look at the history of our EBIT, you can see that we have a positive trend in our journey.
We increased our midterm target range twice in the last 10 years from 6%-9% to 8%-10% and to 9%-12% and there was just one miss in the year 2017. You can also see the impact of COVID in the year 2020 and then the sharp recovery in the following two years, where we had lower cost coming out of COVID restructuring and very strong market demand, mainly in the comm segment coming from North America and large 5G rollouts. Since 2023, we are with again a positive trend coming from 9.1% in 2023 to 9.7% in 2024 to the 10.5% we report for last year.
The industry segment already mentioned as being the highest contributor has increased again its contribution to our bottom line on the basis of strong growth in orders as well as net sales, with clearly double-digit growth. All market verticals and all applications within the industry segment contributed positively to the growth. In particular, our growth initiative, aerospace and defense but also all other applications such as test and measurement, high-power charging and all other niche applications summarized under general industrial. The EBIT margin improved by 100 basis points, mainly on the fact that we could leverage the growth operationally. In the communication segment, it sticks out that orders grew by 22% versus our already good previous year to CHF 418 million.
The driver here was clearly the data center market and within this application, it's our highly differentiated technology around the all optical switching. Net sales has seen a similar decline by 22% to a level of CHF 270. This is due to the fact that we were just able to invoice for two months in this Indian large infrastructure project. This project last into January and February 2025 and came to an end as of March last year. The large orders from the data center market has not yet translated into higher sales. Untypical for the communication segment, where we have very short lead times of about 14-16 days on average between order intake and sales. Those orders came in during the summer period and served HUBER+SUHNER to release significant investment in the ramp-up.
The operating profit declined by 20 basis points. In the transportation segment, the story is quickly told. Actually, we see very little change in orders and in net sales versus previous year and this is good news after the decline from 2023 to 2024. Railway showed a positive development, in particular our growth initiative there, which focuses on communication solutions on trains and along the tracks. Automotive business was still low and had a very small decline versus previous year. Nevertheless, we managed to increase profitability on operating margin by 70 basis points versus 2024, which is due to the better business mix as well as a cost conscious business management. This the short summary on the three segments.
If we have a look into the regions, we can see that Americas grew by 24% on the back of a decline in Asia-Pacific. The explanation here is that the growth in the Americas was driven by industry and communication, while the finished Indian project left its marks in the sales in the Asia-Pacific region. It's certainly nice that our largest region, EMEA, grew by 6%. I will conclude my first part of the presentation with an update on our sustainability strategy. We have, as one of the pioneering companies, submitted already SBTI targets in 2017, which had a target year of 2025. I can confirm that we have achieved those targets. Consequently, we had to submit new targets for the future, which have been validated last year.
They include a reduction of Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 55% and Scope 3 emissions shall be reduced by 25%. Also, together with those reduction targets, we have committed to a net zero target by 2015. Important is to mention that ESG reporting, the non-financial reporting for the first time is following the ESRS standard voluntarily. It is supposed to remain on this level and be a report according to an internationally recognized standard. Nevertheless, we were able to reduce the volume of the report, which is quite unusual. It's really a very condensed document consisting of a lot of information. We have also participated in two ratings, which are probably the most known in the market. EcoVadis, we achieved a silver rating, while for CDP we again improved to A-minus after a B in the previous year.
With that, I'm at the end of the first section and I would like to hand over to Richard Hämmerli for the financial discussion.
Thank you, Urs. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Also from my side, I'm happy to guide you through the financials of HUBER+SUHNER 2025. Starting with order intake, as mentioned by Urs, first time, we managed to get over CHF 1 billion in order intake, which equates to growth of 13.7%. When we look organically, the growth is even strong at 18.1%. The 4.4% are impacted by foreign exchange rates, copper and portfolio effects, whereas FX is the main driver here. Noteworthy, all three segments had organic positive growth last year. When we look into sales, the -3%, here we see that the main driver for the negative deviation compared to the previous year was again the FX effect. Organically, the company were flat.
Communication had lower sales, mainly due to the Indian project that was very strong in 2024. Industry, however, had a lot of headwind also from one of the reasons, the growth initiative A&D. When we're looking to the margin development compared to the previous years, we see an increase in gross margins throughout the time. Especially also in the second half of the year, despite lower volume, we were able to increase our gross margin for the group. Looking into SG&A, they were driven by investments. While selling expenses stayed more or less flat compared to the previous year, the R&D expenses increased by about CHF 5 million, as well as the administration expenses, which were mainly driven by investments into IT, our SAP core system.
On the R&D side, we mainly invested into our differentiating technologies. Looking into the EBIT on the left side, the EBIT bridge, you can see that industry EBIT improved most with over CHF 11 million and this contributed both heavily to the group EBIT increase of CHF 4.2 million. Communication, due to a lower volume, contributed with a lower EBIT in 2025, while transportation, thanks to stringent cost management, was able to increase its EBIT contribution. On the right-hand side, you see a little bit our margin profile. Clearly, the industry is the dominating segment when it comes to margin levels. They were able to increase by 100 basis points, as well as transportation increased their margin, while communication slightly decreased despite much lower volume, was able to get to a similar level.
Overall, the increase from 9.7% to 10.5% for the group. Now, going below the EBIT on the financial result, they were more or less flat compared to the previous year. There's CHF -1 million. Then on the tax expenses was CHF -15 million. Here we had stronger revenue to recognize in jurisdictions with higher tax rates. That's why the tax expenses were higher in 2025 than in 2024. Overall net income came in at CHF 74.9 million, an increase of 3.6% compared to the previous year. When we look at the tax rate on the right-hand side, you can see that our effective tax rate is again lower than the expected tax rate, mainly thanks to R&D and other grants that were non-taxable and we were able to book.
Looking into investments, we accelerated our investments in 2025, so the investments amounted to CHF 55.5 million CapEx and which is a rate of 6.4% as percentage of sales. When we compare that to the average of the depreciation over the last couple of years, we can see that we are clearly investing above this average and we're in a growth mode. Looking at the balance sheet. On the balance sheet, we see the net liquidity at CHF 211 million, which is 15% more than end of 2024. The balance sheet on a total is at CHF 867 million, with an equity ratio of 78%. Cash flow, that's also to me a highlight from last year. We had a very strong cash generation also thanks to very good net working capital management.
We were able to generate CHF 127 million of cash flow from operating activities, resulting in a free operating cash flow of CHF 70 million. Free cash flow ended up above CHF 30 million, CHF 31.3 million. When we look at the return on invested capital, here we see the positive momentum that started in 2023 and we were able also here to increase our return on invested capital to 17.1%, well above our capital rate. When we look into the dividends, the dividends, the proposal to the AGM will be to increase the dividend to 2 CHF per share, which equates to 50% of our net income target. Summarizing, HUBER+SUHNER delivered 2025 a solid operating performance in a challenging environment. This was mainly impacted by the FX development but also the tariffs.
Despite these effects, we were able to achieve a double-digit order intake growth. We were able to improve our gross margin. We generated strong free operating cash flow. Last but not least, we're also able to increase our return on invested capital. With that, I'm handing back to Urs.
Thank you, Richard. At this point, I will give you an outlook for 2026 and I will share with you a view, a detailed view on the different markets and how we see them developing. First, I would like to highlight again our highly attractive portfolio of market verticals that we serve. We are in the connectivity business, which per se is a growing market and within this large field, we focus on applications which allow for a higher degree of differentiation and high growth. In particular, I would like to highlight once more our growth initiatives, aerospace and defense, data center, Railcom and EV. In the last year, three of those four have performed well, contributing with positive top-line growth and with above-average profitability to HUBER+SUHNER's financial performance.
In particular, aerospace and defense, as well as data center, are two market verticals which catch a lot of attention these days in the market due to its favorable trends. I would like to highlight that these two growth initiatives have not been just selected recently based on the hype in the market but we have named those growth initiatives some nine years ago as being decisive for the development and the future of HUBER+SUHNER. When we look at the distribution of the top line last year, which we usually do in a bit more detail, we report on segment level and here we give a bit more segment look through. As far as the figures are concerned, you can see that due to the success of the industry segment, the share of sales has climbed to 38%.
This per se is good news as this is our highest margin business. The market verticals have developed favorably across the board, namely, as I mentioned, Aerospace and Defense, which has grown double-digit and accounts now for 16% of our sales versus the 12% in 2024. Also the other market verticals have contributed positively. While in communication, we see the strong mobile network market of the past at a very low level and also the fixed network market per se is not very dynamic. There is one exception among the applications in the communication market and that's data center. Here, the driver is obviously the huge investments in data center infrastructure driven by AI.
You can see the arrow pointing down overall as the communication equipment application, as well as the fixed access network application declined while data center started to show positive growth. The mobile network market accounted for 23% due to the Indian project in the year 2024 and decreased now to a level of 16%. In transportation, we have 30% of our sales, 20% go into railway application and 10% into automotive. With that, I would like to share a bit more insights of the market trends in our industrial market verticals and applications. Here, HUBER+SUHNER focuses very much on high-tech applications, sometimes very niche but allowing for a high degree of differentiation. This explains the high margin in this business segment.
In particular, the A&D, as I mentioned already twice, has contributed positively and we expect that trend to continue as the increase of defense budgets is only starting to show effect on our business. It has to be repeated here that the A&D market is a very long cyclical market. Announcement from governments to increase defense budgets results in business for HUBER+SUHNER as a component supplier only several years later. Nevertheless, we have already seen growth and I think we will see more growth going forward. This applies not only for defense, where we focus primarily on communication solution for army applications but also for the growth in space around commercial satellite programs.
An important factor for growth next to the positive momentum in the A&D market is that HUBER+SUHNER traditionally focused very much on RF technology, while the trend is going into complete solutions. With our three technologies, RF, fiber optic and copper cables, we see also the opportunity to leverage those three technologies in this market, selling complete systems and offering a one-stop shop for our customers around communication solutions. The test and measurement market, after a dip three years ago, has recovered nicely and we are probably approaching a very good cycle in the semiconductor industry. Our prime focus in test and measurement is chip testing.
We see opportunities in growing in this particular application with chip testing but we also see opportunities to diversify our business into other test applications, such as lab automation, which is an initiative to supply not just the test lead but complete test arrangements, as well as other application in test environments. The semiconductor industry is creating a positive trend and so does the broadening of our market focus. HPC, an application that HUBER+SUHNER pioneered and is the market leader for cooled highest voltage cabling, is a market that we serve since the beginning, some 8-10 years ago. The market has emerged, has gone through cycles and we were happy last year with the development and the growth of the HPC application.
Our ambition here is to stay the technology and market leader, growing with the market and also consequently benefiting from the replacement of those cables in the field after the aging of the cables. There is also an additional opportunity to develop next to the strong U.S. market, other regions such as Europe but also China and India, where we have picked up business during the last year. Last but not least, we have a lot of smaller applications that we serve in our industry segment, which focus on medical energy but also cryo and quantum computing. Those niche applications offer all a very high degree of differentiation, thus being attractive to HUBER+SUHNER from a margin point of view. In the communication segment, connectivity is a core application for our global key accounts.
That's why there are big efforts to standardize connectivity solutions in the communication markets, making them replaceable and offering second, third and fourth sources to our customers. We are playing in this field quite successfully but our strategy in the communication segment is to add business primarily on application based on highly differentiated technologies. Good examples here to mention are our OCS products from Polatis, an acquisition that was completed in the year 2016 and which proves to be a vital piece of technology for future data center architecture. There are other activities that we manage and where we are at the forefront and in this context, I would like to mention hollow core fiber connectivity. Fibers which are basically not glass fibers but are hollow.
The reason being that light travels with 50% more speed in air compared to the speed in glass. Those fibers are becoming more and more mature and need connectivity. We focus on packaging those fibers in cables, as well as being able to connect through standard connectors, those hollow core fibers with each other but also with standard single-mode glass fibers. All these technologies will help HUBER+SUHNER to differentiate and will accelerate growth according to our plans in the communication segment through the very high and continued investment in data center infrastructure. The mobile network market, which was our most important and dominant application in the comm segment, is waiting for the next generation technology around 6G. We are 6G ready but the technology is not yet ready to be rolled out.
We expect that to be or to take place in about four years, around the year 2030. Until then, there are still individual programs and projects to upgrade existing mobile communication infrastructure from 4G to 5G standard and also enhance the throughput of 5G infrastructure. But we don't expect that market to be very dynamic until there is a technology jump from 5G to 6G. In fixed network, the data traffic is doubling every three years, which requires continuous investment in the fiber network infrastructure. We have solution, very standardized but also highly differentiated and we are trying to benefit from this infrastructure build-out to be able to cope with infrastructure investments in order to cope with the ever-increasing data traffic. The last application that we focus in the communication segment are equipment manufacturers.
Those are the companies that supply electronics into networks and that have the products that make those networks run. We go into those equipment. There are switches, there are routers and all of them work electronically. In other words, typically there is an optical signal coming to the equipment. The signal is converted into an electric signal and is then processed electronically while it's again converted to optical when it leaves the box. There are various products for us that go into this equipment, in particular, in transceivers, which do the conversion from optical to electrical signals, where we can offer advanced WDM technology through Cube Optics.
An acquisition that we have completed in 2014, which is the clear technology leader for miniaturized WDM technology to be included in transceivers of high data rates going to 800 gigabits per second and higher to 1.6 terabits. In communication, the strategy is clear. The profitability of 7.9%, as reported in the last year, is to be improved according to our plans. Our strategy is to push highly differentiated technology, which shall improve not just top line but also bottom line in this segment going forward. Last but not least, the transportation segment. Here we have two growth initiative. The obvious one is the rail communication. This is communication on trains and along the tracks. Here we can also leverage the access and the availability of all three connectivity technology.
Typically, the antennas are RF. The signal on the train is either an electrical and RF signal or an optical signal. We are the market leader for antennas that go onto buses and trains. Around that, we are trying to broaden our business focus, supply complete solutions as we managed to do for Deutsche Bahn, a project that we announced a while ago. There is additional projects in the market that we follow and where we would like to push through our one-stop shop strategy. The EV market is a market that has so far disappointed. We expected higher volumes by now. We don't see those volumes but we see small signs of improvement in this market from a technology point of view but also as far as the available vehicles is concerned.
We believe that today the latest introduction to the market based on generation two platforms are competitive from a total cost point of view, which means that they are a bit higher in the investment, initial investment, which gradually can be recovered through lower operating cost. As the battery technology progress is still very fast, we predict that this market will still pick up and accelerate later as originally planned, I have to admit but we believe that it will still happen. That is why we hold on to this growth initiative and we are positioned strongly in this market with design ins, with important manufacturers of trucks and buses, with our mainly copper products. Rolling stock, that's a stable market, very long cycles.
We all know that this market typically has project durations for 4 to 5 to 6 years. The backlog of our customers, like Stadler, illustrates how long cyclical this business is and how early those projects are being awarded. For us, obviously, the products that we supply to rolling stock, they are awarded and bought at a later stage. It is a market that is actually very stable and where the momentum is currently positive. After COVID, where we have seen a dip, where nobody wanted to use public transportation, the momentum is back and we don't see that market to go through the roof but we see a stable to a modest growth in the rolling stock sector. Our initiative to diversify our automotive business into another application which has to do with autonomous driving is also delayed.
We had great hope that this will pick up earlier and I was also standing here some years ago predicting that by the year 2025, we would all be probably driving cars where we can turn the driver's seat around and read a book. This has not proven right. Still, we believe that autonomous driving is a great trend and we hold on to this business. We have achieved early design-ins with tier one suppliers from Germany, both announced. We have been able, during the last year, to diversify our customer base also with Asian customers and we will see volumes picking up, not with the speed and not to the level as originally foreseen but it's also a market that we predict to grow for HUBER+SUHNER.
This is in a nutshell, how we see the markets and the different applications. Although there is a lot of positive things in the market, we have to state here a disclaimer that has to do with the geopolitical conflicts, the economic uncertainty, in particular through emerging trade barriers overnight, which may affect the investment climate in the market in several of our applications. Nevertheless, we are cautiously optimistic for 2026. We believe that connectivity is a good place to play for HUBER+SUHNER, so no need for us to move into a completely different corner in the marketplace. We believe that the trends are in favor of connectivity, in particular the applications that we focus on, where the key drivers are ecological mobility, seamless communication and personal safety.
We also believe that our long-term strategy with a very strong focus on customers and innovation, our technology leadership in technologies that prove to be currently in very high demand, give us hope for a positive outlook. Furthermore, if you look at the order intake in 25 and the backlog, we believe that we have never started a year with a higher backlog. That also gives us confidence. Last but not least, the momentum in several markets is positive and in our favor and that does not only concern the growth initiative, aerospace and defense and data center but several other markets, as I have tried to highlight just before. Maybe a last point is that you remember our portfolio, which is relatively wide. That is a challenge for you all to remember the different applications HUBER+SUHNER is in.
It's much easier to understand companies that follow just one application. We believe in this strategy of balanced diversification. It's clear that not all the time all markets are pointing up but it gives us resilience and we believe that right now, looking forward, we have really a very attractive portfolio of applications that we serve. Based on all that, our guidance for this year includes a midterm target range which remains unchanged from 9%-12%. For the sales, we expect at least a 10% growth versus 2025. Regarding EBIT margin, we expect a percentage value in the upper half of our midterm target range. With those words, I come to the end of the official presentation. I would just like to highlight the dates in our financial calendar and highlight one thing that doesn't take place every year.
After 2024, we have again a capital market day. Please note this day. It would be a great pleasure for us to host as many visitors as possible, this time in Pfäffikon. With that, I would hand over to Chorus Call and start the Q&A session.
For questions from the phone, you may press star and one. The first question comes from the line of Louis Billon from Baader Europe. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for taking my question. My question is concerning the communication division and the Optical Circuit Switch. Your competitor said that the market might exceed CHF 1 billion by 2028. Do you feel comfortable with this stance and what kind of market share do you expect in this market?
I don't know to which comment you refer. I receive comments every day. We hear every figure from a few hundred million CHF to CHF 2.5 billion. We believe that the market opportunity is real. We believe that the market opportunity is sizable. I don't wanna confirm any figure out of that range but we believe in that market to be substantial going forward in the next few years.
Okay. That's clear. Second question. As the numbers come from Lumentum, my second question, if I may, is on the transportation division. Do you expect more order intake in 2026? Because when we look at the rolling stock manufacturers, it seems that they have not received as many orders as they expected in signaling in 2025, so they are expecting a catch up in 2026. Do you expect this same catch up, especially in Germany?
We don't guide on segment level but when you recall my comments on the different applications, we believe that automotive has seen the bottom of the valley as far as electric vehicles in the commercial sector are concerned. We believe also that our ADAS application will modestly grow. For the railway market, we are cautiously optimistic, I would say, that we can at least defend the level of 25% and probably expect some growth from the growth initiative rail communication.
Okay. That's very clear. Thank you.
We have a question from the room. Mr. Fehrenbach.
Fehrenbach, awp. Can you tell us how much negative the influence you had through the U.S. tariffs in the past year? Some companies did maybe more or less suffer. Do you plan to reclaim these funds you may lost? Thanks.
On the tariff front, I can confirm that we had negative impact from the tariffs. Nevertheless, we took a couple of actions to mitigate them. One is obviously to talk to the customer and increase prices. Second is, HUBER+SUHNER has a very diversified production footprint and we were able to shift production places from here to there and also adapt the supply chain. While there were effects, they were finally limited. On the question about whether we plan to reclaim, it is something we're going to look into and are also following the situation on what is possible.
It don't say low or mid-single-digit CHF millions or something.
It was a manageable amount and then you can see we were able to mitigate the effect.
Herr Felkes.
Yeah, from Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The share price, of course, has seen some stellar, very strong growth, over 100% up in one year. You won't find so many examples among the Swiss industrial companies. What do you account this for? Have you found also new shareholders? If yes, from where? I remember you, Urs Ryffel, last time I think you were cautiously optimistic about these fast charging stations. You said, "Oh, in some areas even people are starting to queue up." What is your expectation? Now for the current year? I mean, will people, especially now with the oil price, obviously, which has gone up quite a bit and people decide now on buying an EV now more than in the past. If you allow one last question, share of defense, I believe it's now 16% together with aerospace.
What could it be in maybe two or three years' time as the growth is now really showing in your results?
We don't comment share price development. Our task is to manage the company. That doesn't mean that we do not follow the share price with interest. Of course, it proves that our strategy is seen positively in the market and our positioning. I think there are several effects that have had an impact on the market perception of HUBER+SUHNER. One is certainly the broad growth in industry, which is positive for the future of HUBER+SUHNER, because I pointed out this is the highest margin business. That's why it is our explicit strategy to grow above average in this highest margin business. Another factor was our presence with this highly differentiated technology in the data center market, which has caused a lot of attraction.
We have heard the previous question about the market potential and my answer there was, yeah, the market is real, the opportunity is real and it's sizable. I think these effects have had an impact in the market. HPC, I mentioned also at some point that, we were happy with the development last year. Our ambition is to defend our technology and market leadership in this highest power application based on cooled cables. We had a positive development in 2025 and we are trying to, duplicate this success of last year also this year. I'm confident that the infrastructure is not built yet. What was the last one?
A&D.
A&D, the share. Well, we will see. I mean, probably 16% as all other businesses are growing with the same pace. Now, this is difficult to say. Alex?
Thank you. Good morning. Can we briefly return to the optical switch, please? The first question I would have is your ramp up in the facility in Poland. Could you provide us some details about the progress that you're achieving? And are you on budget with your own expectations? The second is I understand that you're considering also the collaboration with a contract manufacturer to accelerate the ramp-up of the optical switch production at some time. Are you already engaged with potential candidates? And the last one is a more general remark and question. Your competition in optical circuit switching is moving at rapid speed, Nvidia pace, so to say. And in terms of ramping up and scaling the entire product, are you convinced that your own Polatis entity is moving at the same pace?
Are you holding your position or are the others catching up or even m oving ahead of yourself? Thank you.
Yeah. Please understand that we don't give a lot of details about our ramp up. I would like to answer your first question by stating that we are, broadly speaking, on track with our ramp up. Whether we are ramping up with the same speed as our competition is difficult to judge, because from what we hear, we believe that they move with the speed of light. That is the question, you know, are these words or is it real? We don't feel that we are falling behind. That is a statement I would like to make and I would like to state that from a technology point of view, we stay at the forefront.
The outsourcing?
The outsourcing that falls under the category of the first. That is something we do or we don't do and we don't talk about it.
Thank you.
Thank you. Another question on OCS. So what I try to understand this hyperscaler order that you have announced in summer, could you share more or less how much of that entire contract is already reflected in orders? Secondly, also, I'm afraid somewhat related but if you know, look at the CapEx, at least, you know, like a year ago, you said you would ramp up a CapEx to build that factory in Poland. Is like a similar step planned? What should we kind of pencil in for CapEx going forward? Thanks.
Yeah, we don't disclose that. You can assume that some of the CapEx went into our ramp up. That has the objective to increase output of our OCS. The order of this hyperscaler in summer, you can try to calculate. We don't disclose that. We communicated that we have a significant commitment. Please bear in mind that we always said that in order to release the investment, we wanted commercial commitments in volume and in orders. We are determined to stay in this market not just for one or two years. We believe that this market is highly attractive for HUBER+SUHNER for the next few years. That's why the orders this summer probably represent an important milestone for HUBER+SUHNER in order to release significant investments to serve this first volume customer.
We hope that this customer will engage in a long-term partnership with HUBER+SUHNER going beyond the orders that we have received and booked this summer. There is also the opportunity to diversify our customer base. We will talk about that when it's confirmed. You can be assured that we work on trying to win additional customers and we are in talks engaged with a wide range of large customers in the market.
Thank you. Two follow-up questions. You've mentioned explicitly Stadler Rail. Is this their customer in the rolling stock business for you? Maybe even the only one? What makes it so significant that you mentioned it? Again just as I asked the question before but I mean, do you think there could? What's your expectation really for the uptake of these electric vehicles now with the oil price, you know, in being much higher? I mean, could it have an impact, you know? I mean, obviously this would also the charging business with the charging stations.
Yeah. I mentioned Stadler because in a Swiss context, this company is best known but I could have mentioned other railway rolling stock OEMs such as Alstom or Siemens or CRRC. We are globally serving the railway industry and we are market leader for cabling. Stadler is an important customer but definitely not the only one. As far as the pickup rate of commercial vehicles, EV commercial vehicles is concerned, our market analysis shows growth of 14%, 13.7 or 9%, during 2025. We haven't seen that due to the fact that the inventories were full with our products. That had to do with the peak in 2023 still. We expect that that will certainly have an impact going forward on HUBER+SUHNER’s business.
I say, you know, I don't wanna stick out my neck too far and say it's growing by X%. As I mentioned, we believe that we have now crossed the bottom of the valley. Electricity also needs to be available.
You mention in your presentation prominently the progress in Hollow Core Fiber. Can you let us know what has changed from last year to this year? Second, we were missing in 2025 follow-on business from your customer in India. Is there a realistic chance that this business will come in 2026? Thank you.
Yeah. Hollow Core Fiber is a new technology and the market struggles with ramping up the production capacity of Hollow Core Fibers. That also requires huge investments, so that is currently the bottleneck. The cost of Hollow Core Fibers are still much higher than standard single-mode fiber. But those that follow the communication market know that 30 years ago the standard single-mode fiber had a completely different pricing. We believe that this market will evolve and that we are well-positioned but we don't expect 2026 to be a boom year for this technology yet. India is India. The market there is up and down. This project that we have completed was successful and the follow-on order is still pending.
It may come to HUBER+SUHNER but it's difficult to predict. These government projects, they follow the government logic and it's not something that can be reliably planned. We just have to be ready. We are fighting for it but no news.
Thanks.
Tommaso Bertobez, a question on the outlook. I mean, you say at least 10%. Could you share what are like the moving parts and, you know, what the range could be potentially?
No. No, the guidance is at least 10% and if we have more information, we will obviously share that with the whole market. Bossa.
I would still have a understanding question concerning the CapEx ramp in Poland at Polatis. Can you allude on the CapEx? Because there were reclassifications done, I think in note 21 in the annual report. Maybe you can comment on them and tell us the whole capacity in terms of millions of turnover that you will be able to realize, just for us to understand.
Yeah, yeah. No, it's you know, that information goes too far. You can assume that from the CHF 55 million that we spent, some of that went into Poland and the ramp up but it's not our only opportunity and we don't put all eggs in just one basket. There are also other initiatives that deserve our attention and our investments. We report on spends and not on approvals. I can share that the approvals in 2025 were higher than the spends, so there is more to come.
Maybe a related question concerning the patterns of these contracts. There is no prepayment. There is just volume agreements price agreements over many years with those lead customers or this one and hopefully more lead customers. Is that correct to assume?
That's correct to assume.
Thank you.
Frau Stadelmann
You also mentioned the WDM technology from Cube Optics. Do you already have sales from this technology and or when will it be ready? When will we see more of it?
Your answer will not surprise you. Yeah, we have sales. It's still small amounts and we could achieve much more if we had the output. It's another ramp-up topic.
Is the ramp-up already started?
It has started and we are working on it.
That's also in Poland?
No, that is in Germany. That's a Cube Optics initiative and it's a highly automated and therefore complex process, which explains why ramping up is not done overnight. I think we have addressed all questions from the room. Are there questions from the call? Christiane will read the questions from the call.
We have one question from the webcast. I'm sorry. That's a clash. From Thomas Griesser, St. Galler Tagblatt. He's asking to comment on the number of employees that has increased. Where does the increase come from?
Yeah. The increase is not significant. Obviously, Poland accounts for an increase. The decrease in India is not seen in our figures because the ramp-up was mainly managed with temps, which we don't report under our headcount figures. Switzerland is pretty stable. There is a few people more in Switzerland. The headcount topic doesn't provide a lot of interesting insights, I would say. More? Herr Felkes.
No, just because I think it was not answered yet but I mean, have you gained new shareholders, you know?
We have certainly gained new shareholders but w e are not allowed to disclose that. Every shareholder that is above 3%, has to be reported and that's how much. That's all information we provide.
I think what can be confirmed that investor relations activities have picked up during the course of last year. Significantly.
That, okay. That has been the case. More roadshows or more.
Yeah. Also a lot of requests for meetings. I think there is no further question, neither from the room nor from the call. I would like to thank you very much for your interest in HUBER+SUHNER for attending in person or in the call. As always, those that made it here to our press conference in person, we kindly invite you to a stand up small lunch here. All other people, I would like to say goodbye and hope to see you again latest in summer when we publish the half-year results. If not there, then definitely at the Capital Market Day. Thank you very much again. Have a good day.